It’s not easy
being an older son. Being the oldest
child means you’re the keeper of the accounts, the one who makes sure things
come out even. Parents are always trying
to give younger siblings things you’ve worked hard to earn. I know.
I’m an older son.

When I was in
elementary school, my parents were strict about bedtime. It was eight o’clock, no questions
asked. By the time I got to the sixth
grade, I could stay up until nine, and on Tuesdays, the night Hogan’s Heroes
was on TV, I could stay up until nine thirty.
It was a privilege I had coming to me because of my age. But it was hard for me to enjoy Tuesday
nights because my brother who was seven years younger than I got to stay up
with me. It took me eleven years to earn
the right to stay up late, but he got to do it at the age of four.

Being an older
son takes hard work and a sense of responsibility. Psychologists have discovered that older
siblings tend to be high achievers. We
value hard work and determination. We try
hard to please.

So I identify
with the older son in the parable. The
party his father threw for his brother wasn’t fair. Try to understand how irresponsible the
younger brother had been. He asked his
father if he could have his inheritance before his father died – and his father
gave it to him. Imagine how that must
have riled the responsible older brother.
Then he didn’t give a thought to his future – didn’t invest any of it,
didn’t use it to establish himself in a career.
He completely blew it on a lifestyle that that makes the Kardashians
look cheap. Yes, he finally came to his
senses – when he didn’t have any more cash to burn. He came slinking home with his tail between
his legs. But what does he get for
it? Not even a reprimand. He gets a party, with music, dancing, and
celebration.

The older son had to set things
right. “Listen!” he lectured his father.
“For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I
have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young
goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.”

The older brother
was standing up for what was fair and right.
He was protesting a travesty of justice.
Sometimes a person’s true character is revealed by an offhand remark or an
unintended action. We can see what’s
really bothering the older brother as he’s returning from the fields. As he gets near the house, he hears the sound
of music and dancing. But does he
quicken his pace to see why everyone is celebrating? Does he run to find out what good news they’ve
heard? No. He draws back. He calls a servant over and asks what’s going
on. Didn’t he trust his father? Didn’t he have confidence that whatever his
father was celebrating was something he could celebrate too? No. He
had to calculate whether or not his father was doing the right thing.[1]

So the real issue
wasn’t between the two brothers. When
the older brother drew back and hesitated to join his father’s party it was
before he knew his brother had returned.
The real issue was between the older brother and the father. The older brother couldn’t join the father’s
celebration until he was sure it met his standards.

It wasn’t that
the father didn’t love him. “Son, you
are always with me,” the father told him, “and all that is mine is yours.” That wasn’t enough for the older son. He also wanted his brother to be
excluded. Unless his brother was
excluded, he could not enjoy his father’s blessings.

So who was better off in the
end? The profligate younger son who
changed his ways and came back, or the older son who did everything just right
but was offended by his father’s outlandish, unquestioning acceptance? In the end, it was the older son, not the
younger one, who was separated from the father.
That’s one of the dangers of staying at home and doing everything
right. If we’re not careful, we start to
think God loves us for what we’ve done.

I heard a story about a woman who died
and went to heaven. When she arrived at
the pearly gates, St. Peter met her and told her that admission was based on a
point system. He told her that in order
to get into heaven and spend eternity in the loving embrace of God, you had to
have 200 points. Peter asked the woman
how many points she had. She thought to
herself, “This should be easy.”

“Well,” she began, “I taught Sunday
school faithfully.”

“Great,” said Peter. “That’s worth a point.”

The woman cringed. “I went to church every Sunday.”

“Excellent,” Peter responded. “That’s another point.”

The woman was getting worried. “I cared for my elderly neighbor for years,
up until she developed a heart condition and died.”

“That’s wonderful,” said Peter. That’s worth two points.”

The woman was getting desperate. “I tithed,” she said.

“One point,” said Peter.

Finally, in desperation, she said,
“I’ll never be able to come up with enough points. It’ll take the grace of God to get in here.”

“That’s 195 points,” cried
Peter. “Welcome.”

One thing that makes it hard for
churches to welcome new people, especially people who are different from us, is
all the good things we’ve done together.
We gather each week for worship.
We form friendships in our Sunday school classes and fellowship
groups. We take food to Downtown Daily
Bread and sing together in the choir.

But we’ve always got to remember that
whatever we do as a church, it’s not for ourselves that we’re worshiping and
learning and working. It’s for God. God in God’s absolute goodness blesses us
when we live for God, but what we do as a church is not about us. It’s about God, who is always welcoming people
home.

So, we keep those strong bonds we’ve
built together. We hold each other
accountable for our journey of faith.
But remember, there are lots of others whom God would welcome into this,
God’s church. God loves that person who
comes for the first time, anxious and shy and wondering if she’ll fit in, God
loves her just as much as God loves those who have been faithfully here for
years.

Sometimes we act
as if God’s love is a limited commodity.
We act as if God is gracious and loving and forgiving to everyone, there
won’t be enough love and grace left for us.
But there’s enough. My parents
had enough love for my brother and for me.
It was more important for them to enjoy having the family all together
on those Tuesday nights around the TV than to enforce my abstract 11 year old’s
view of justice. The father in the parable had enough love for both his sons,
enough that he could celebrate having the family back together without loving
the older son any less. We can’t count
or measure God’s love. There’s more than
enough for everybody.